Feedback on dungeon scaling

manny254 · November 2014

To start I play in a group of 4 players. We all have 3-4 v14 characters. So we normally run the undaunted vet dungeon of the day for the key 4 times. We all play a mix of classes, builds, and roles. We have our main characters that we have played since launch, and our 4th stringers that are not nearly as polished. These are some complaints I have after running all the dungeons at least 8 times each between the past two weeks. Having performed all 3 roles at least once a week on each dungeon.

1. Banished Cells
I feel that the keeper Imril and the last boss need their timers looked at. On Imril I feel that even on characters with enough dps to kill them before she pops out we spend more time on the adds then her. I have a similar feeling on the last boss that one person has to stop what they are doing to kill the harvester bubbles.

2. Fungal grotto
My biggest complaint is taunts. The boss who has 3 spider adds that cause her to enrage is my 1st complaint. Her spiders do not respond to taunt and deal way to much damage. On my round tanking it last week I remember my group running around like mad men, and no matter how much I taunted them the spiders would not cooperate. Mephala is also notorious for ignoring taunt. When she does the aoe effect centered on her self she breaks taunt, and sometimes she will need to be taunted multiple times to listen.

3. Spindleclutch
Praxin Douare needs to have his timers looked at. Even with higher dps characters we always still had 2 melee mini bosses when the main boss enters the fray. I feel the timers should be such that it is reasonably possible to kill every thing before the boss starts attacking.

4. Wayrest Sewers
No complaints if anything I feel this is easiest of the bunch by far.

5. Darkshade Caverns
I don't feel this is particularly a hard dungeon, but I would like for the last bosses to have his phases last longer, and change less frequently.

6. Elden Hollow
No complaints.

Natjur · November 2014

I agree, most of the Vet dungeons are fine if you know the boss cycles except

Keeper Imril from banished cells
Praxin Douare from Spindleclutch

And both of them, its the adds not the boss that the issue. They are a lot harder then the rest of the instance. Would be nice to have them looked at. The fights are doable, but harder then you would except them to be and should be tuned.

schroed360 · November 2014

I agree with the OP. I just want to add that the neck of DC may need to be looked at.I mean now that the boss has a lot more life maybe the phase where he is on the floor might be a little longer.Oh and in BC imril need a fix I think since I feel like she is by - passing block mitigation , and on last boss reflect spell do not work .

axiomaticb14a_ESO · November 2014

Agreed fully on the Praxin fight in Spindle and Imril in BC.

For a group of players who regularly run trials successfully and can get to stages 9 and 10 of vet DSA, the Praxin fight should not be nearly impossible without absolutely perfect execution and lucky boss mechanics. The reason for this isn't the selfishness of wanting easy content we can blow through, the reason is because it imbalances the game content structure. There needs to be a semblance of a difficulty scale where some things are, in relation to the gear and skill of the player, easy, doable, hard, and extremely challenging. And vet dungeons bosses like Spindle's Praxin should not be extremely challenging for players who are as geared and experienced as trial completing / vet DSA players.

The main problems with Praxin are:
- 3rd wave: mini-boss HP is too high, Rabbu in particular. Its rare to have only two left up when the main boss engages.
- main boss engages: between the standard dmg he deals out, the pink streaks on the floor, the pink circle, the mana drain curse, AND the fact that there are always still mini bosses up, there is absolutely no room for any error AND if the mana drain curse targetting is unfavorable, there's simply no reasonable way to beat the encounter.

If you skill for more CC to control the mini bosses, you gimp your dmg and then there are too many still up when main boss engages. if you preference dmg, you don't have the utility or backup heals to deal with the chaos of the fight. I've only beat him once by absolute sheer luck that the tank kept getting mana drained, and once got him to 1% but it required an absurd amount of attempts each time and flawless execution. Praxin in vet spindle should not be on par with the challenges of SO or later stage vet DSA.

As for Imril, its definitely more doable than Praxin, but most groups fail on this fight because she is porting into her bubbles and spawning the groups of adds way too quickly. Her HP is probably a tad bit too high as well.

Jbmcely · November 2014

manny254 wrote: »

To start I play in a group of 4 players. We all have 3-4 v14 characters. So we normally run the undaunted vet dungeon of the day for the key 4 times. We all play a mix of classes, builds, and roles. We have our main characters that we have played since launch, and our 4th stringers that are not nearly as polished. These are some complaints I have after running all the dungeons at least 8 times each between the past two weeks. Having performed all 3 roles at least once a week on each dungeon.

1. Banished Cells
I feel that the keeper Imril and the last boss need their timers looked at. On Imril I feel that even on characters with enough dps to kill them before she pops out we spend more time on the adds then her. I have a similar feeling on the last boss that one person has to stop what they are doing to kill the harvester bubbles.

2. Fungal grotto
My biggest complaint is taunts. The boss who has 3 spider adds that cause her to enrage is my 1st complaint. Her spiders do not respond to taunt and deal way to much damage. On my round tanking it last week I remember my group running around like mad men, and no matter how much I taunted them the spiders would not cooperate. Mephala is also notorious for ignoring taunt. When she does the aoe effect centered on her self she breaks taunt, and sometimes she will need to be taunted multiple times to listen.

3. Spindleclutch
Praxin Douare needs to have his timers looked at. Even with higher dps characters we always still had 2 melee mini bosses when the main boss enters the fray. I feel the timers should be such that it is reasonably possible to kill every thing before the boss starts attacking.

4. Wayrest Sewers
No complaints if anything I feel this is easiest of the bunch by far.

5. Darkshade Caverns
I don't feel this is particularly a hard dungeon, but I would like for the last bosses to have his phases last longer, and change less frequently.

6. Elden Hollow
No complaints.

1. Imril is not out much when the ads are out thus you should be spending time on them instead of her. If your dps is slow, she will return before they are dead. But just avoid the balls kill the adds and then back on her. As far as the last boss the bubbles do not have much health and can easily be taken down by the healer thus you can leave your dps on the boss and daedric spawns. Of course someone has to stop what they are doing to kill them. They are part of the fight.

2. The spider ads are immune to taunts and will attack the person that has marked target on them. Marked can be cleansed and if you dont have anyone in the party with cleanse or purge then cc them when someone has marked target on them. Have you ever heard of bosses doing an attack that will randomly select a player in the party. Well if not Mephala does this right after her aoe effect. She randomly picks a party member and attacks them and then will return back to the person that taunted her, you don't need to taunt multiple times. Just block and heal up.

3. This fight is probably the best one of all. 2 melee mini bosses up and a main boss is your complaint? There are tons of bosses in the game where you have ads up along with the boss. How did you get past Vet DSA 9 if you can't handle that. Even if you did it when it was nerfed into the ground it still has 2 mini bosses and the main boss.

5. Bleh, this boss is a joke. If the phases changes were slower, they might as well just put a chest in the center of the room and let me walk in and click it to get my 16 gold because that is how easy it would become.

manny254 · November 2014

@Jbmcely‌

You must have missed the 1st part of the post.

We play these dungeon on a variety of characters. Yes we can do everything on out main character without any thought. But I am trying to speak for players who haven't spent as much time on there characters as I have. Everyone should get a challenge, but the game should be balanced. I am convinced no matter what feedback I provided you would feel the same way. Because you want to exclude other players and feel l33t.

With regards to your condescending dps comments we cleared CoA yesterday with the speed achievement. BTW we have beaten round nine of vet arena before it was nerfed without any deaths. Providing feedback does not mean we could not clear content.

xaraan · November 2014

I have to agree with OP on this one. There are a lot of threads complaining about difficulty level, but I enjoy the added challenge. What I don't enjoy is the crazy mechanics that have been sped up in most of the boss encounters.

Before someone gets on about "we did it, so it's do-able" - well, we've done them all as well, multiple times, never anything but hard mode. This isn't about whether or not we can get the job done, but simply about how crazy the blanket buff is when it's effecting timing in some silly ways. Most of the leveled up to v12 dungeons are harder than Crypt of Hearts or City of Ash. That right there tells me something is wrong, whether it's do-able or not.

I'd rather be in a game where lots of people are having fun than be in the 1% club of "I did content you can't do" crowd. Even if I'm already in that 1%.

static_recharge · November 2014

schroed360 wrote: »

Oh and in BC imril need a fix I think since I feel like she is by - passing block mitigation...

This happened to me as well, she hits like a truck when bypassing block. I submitted a bug report about this one.

Armitas · November 2014

manny254 wrote: »

5. Darkshade Caverns
I don't feel this is particularly a hard dungeon, but I would like for the last bosses to have his phases last longer, and change less frequently.

This is my least favorite dungeon for 2 reasons, the netch and the final boss and the fact that the tank switches to dps for this fight. Neither are hard they are just time consuming.

I feel like both the netch fight and the final boss fight are simply too long. I feel like I'm just being hassled away from dpsing the boss in a way that seems tedious rather than exciting.

For the final boss you could lower the health, or increase the phase times. For the netch you could either increase the boss down time or decrease the time you spend killing adds just so you can dps the boss. Basically it all comes down to the timing. Ever since 1.5 boss timing seems off across the board.

Jbmcely · November 2014

manny254 wrote: »

@Jbmcely‌

You must have missed the 1st part of the post.

We play these dungeon on a variety of characters. Yes we can do everything on out main character without any thought. But I am trying to speak for players who haven't spent as much time on there characters as I have. Everyone should get a challenge, but the game should be balanced. I am convinced no matter what feedback I provided you would feel the same way. Because you want to exclude other players and feel l33t.

With regards to your condescending dps comments we cleared CoA yesterday with the speed achievement. BTW we have beaten round nine of vet arena before it was nerfed without any deaths. Providing feedback does not mean we could not clear content.

Feel L33t??? I am not 12 years old, sorry. Not even sure how to feel that way. Anyways, I was just explaining the mechanics of each fight, as you clearly in your explanations of what you thought needed to be fixed, missed a few things. Most of the things in your feedback, as you put it, was just a bunch of misconceptions of how you thought the fight should have been. (i.e. Her spiders do not respond to taunt and deal way to much damage.) My response "It is a cleansable marked target that the spiders switch to.. cure and they will return to the tank" See how this works... If you have as many characters as you do, maybe you should spend a little more time learning the fight mechanics and less time trying to blaze through the content on all of them. That is just my 2 cents and I am sure it will be tossed aside.

I am glad you were able to pass stage 9 before the nerf and do the speed achievement in CoA... You are not alone; but I will find a piece of candy around here for you somewhere if I didn't eat it all myself.